Social Media Monitoring Service, Encore Alert Gains $390K investment.

Social Media Monitoring Service, Encore Alert Gains $390K investment.

Encore Alert, a social media monitoring services that was co-founded by two Georgetown students, have recently announced that they have successfully raised over $390,000 form an investment seed round. The software behind the startup monitors Twitter and sends out alerts whenever a businesses brands are mentioned, allowing the companies to engage with their customers interested int the products.

Expansion.

Encore Alert’s currently client list have included, the Consumer Electronics Association and Georgetown University as well. The Rosslyn-based startup has planned to use the investment to continue expanding their employee count. The company has also managed to hire two new software developers over the past two months.

“We’re really trying to get marketing and salespeople, as well as a few more developers,” said VP of Product Tammy Cho.

CEO James Li commented that in the near future the startup would continue to focus on Twitter.

“Over the next eight months, we’re going to make sure we’re delivering accurate alerts on Twitter,” he said. “When we try to raise the next round of investment, then we’ll be able to say that brands are seeing quantifiable [return on investment]from using our platform.”

Although Encore Alert, has been planned towards other social networking platforms beside Twitter:

“Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google+ are all extremely important platforms that brands use every single day,” said Li. “The faster that we can move and nail down our formula, the faster we can start delivering on those other platforms as well.”

Overwhelming Positive.

The $390,000 investment round is there currently second biggest announcement for Encore alert this month. During the South by Southwest multimedia festival in Austin, the company had launched out a redesigned version of their product that shows the growth in variety in Twitter alerts it provide for its customers.

“The response to the new features has been overwhelming positive,” said Li. “We launched the platform with an emphasis on speed, getting the product out as fast as possible. Going back through and paying more attention to design details and usability has paid off in a really big way.”

The Founding Director of the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Initiative, Jeff Reid, has commented that he his highly confident that other successful startups will follow in the same road as Encore Alert managed to pave.

“I think Georgetown is a wonderful place for entrepreneurship,” he said. “James and Tammy are examples of kind of students that can start a company while they’re in school, and we want to support students like them. We have business pitch competitions, we have courses, we have a summer incubator program … a lot of the things we do are geared towards inspiring students to consider entrepreneurship.”

Li has also agreed with Reid’s thought assessment of Georgetown’s booming entrepreneurial culture.

“I think if we were to examine where we are 5 years from now, we would be able to say that we are in the ranks of the kinds of universities that put out great entrepreneurs,” he said.